Mortaine’s Blog

I wanted to go to a fish store today to look at bettas, with the possible undecided plan of maybe getting one for my cubicle.

So, I searched for an aquarium store, someplace specifically catering to fish-keepers, download and print directions, and on my lunch hour, I head out.

The place is less than 9 miles away. I printed the “avoid freeway” directions because I didn’t feel like dealing with freeway traffic.

Unfortunately, this meant I spent about 10 minutes parked at the stoplight just before the airport. Because the far left lane turns left, away from the airport, and people are too fucking stupid to realize this from the signs and basically fuck up traffic cutting into the other left turn lane. Bastards. Also, there is now one way to approach the airport, so there are about 4 times as many cars as the roads were designed to handle.

And I get going on the next leg of my trip, my blood pressure rising with every stop light, and there is no fucking way to turn right onto Hedding. There’s a detour, but it goes off to the left. Fuckers. Fuck ‘em for blocking off the street, and fuck Mapquest for not knowing about the construction that’s been going on for 2 1/2 years!

Fuck.

I get all the way down to where I was trying to go and realize that I really don’t know that I want to even go in. You know how you get that feeling that something’s not right about a place? I mean, the sign outside was rusted. The blinds were closed (which makes a certain amount of sense for regulating tank temps). I had this general sense of “secret import/export smuggling shop in the backroom that you don’t know about” when I pulled into hte driveway.

So I left. At this point, I have about 10 minutes left in my lunch hour, so I stop at 7-11 and buy hot dogs and cookies for my lunch (oh, yum). Yes, I am guaranteed to regret this later, as the hot dogs weren’t really even red, more of a ruddy brown with a very slight greenish tint that I chose to ignore.

The cookies, by the way, were excellent. 3 oatmeal cookies. They charged me 33 cents for them, which might have been a mistake on their part, but hey– they sold me green hot dogs, okay?

I headed back up to Milpitas, this time taking the freeway (880, as usual, having a traffic jam where the construction is, right before my exit). I pull in about 10 minutes late from my lunch break.

Frankly, I am just relieved to be out of the car and not stuck in traffic getting hot (today is a particularly warm and sunny January day) and pissed off (which goes without saying, really, except I said it).